My advice to accumulate bitcoin as a newbie would be to spend time researching and participating in forums etc and you will accumulate satoshis at the same time that you accumulate experience and knowledge. If you spend time learning you'll earn bitcoin one way or the other.
Thats also another options learn well and get your rank high and join signature. Theres no other way to get bitcoin without investment here aside from signature or join some raffle or free giveaway bitcoin here. But OPs talking about probably the investment part since he is asking if his gonna wait to go down. So my response is about dca instead.
Ranking up maybe hard for some users and they might find it a waste of time if they can't earn anything. This is why newbies left and think about that participating on any activities here is just a waste of time for them. Maybe at start they should not focus on how they can earn but rather how they can learn since once they know more knowledge about bitcoin and other altcoins maybe they can share relevant informations which can help them earn merit then rank up, maybe from this they can possibly earn on sig campaign.